Natural gas in particular comes into consideration as an environmentally acceptable and affordable alternative to diesel or gasoline fuel. In order to be able to carry the natural gas serving as fuel in sufficient quantity in a motor vehicle, the gas is compressed to approximately 10-200 bar, depending on gas quantity and temperature, and stored in a pressurized tank. The storage pressure is thus considerably higher than the operating pressure of the injection valves filling each of the cylinders of the engine. The fuel supply of a motor vehicle powered by Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is therefore equipped with a pressure reducer or pressure regulator, as known for example from DE 195 24 413, U.S. Pat. No. 5,771,857 or U.S. Pat. No. 6,003,543, which is disposed between the gas reservoir and the injection valve and which lowers the storage pressure amounting to up to 200 bar to a preset value of typically 8 bar.
If a very great amount of natural gas flows into the cylinders of the combustion engine due to an abrupt change in load, the pressure in the supply line supplying the injection valve with natural gas temporarily drops below the desired setpoint pressure, since the pressure regulator reacts to this drop in pressure only after a time delay. This response has a disadvantageous effect on the desired driving dynamics of the motor vehicle. Efforts are therefore made to keep the location of the gas line between the pressure reducer/regulator and the assigned injection valve as small as possible. In practice, however, this can only be realized to a limited extent since the installation of the pressure reducer/regulator in proximity to the injection valve poses considerable design engineering problems. In addition, the squeezing together of the two components leads to a corresponding lengthening of the storage-side, high-pressure-resistant and consequently comparatively expensive gas line.